January ‘Win the Pin’ Winners!
A big thank you to all the transcribers and photographers who participated this month in the January ‘Win the Pin’ contest.
The cold weather and deep snow didn’t stop our dedicated volunteers from making this month the best January since we started two years ago. Together taking more than 159,851 photos and more than 346,033 records transcribed.
Here are the lucky winners of the first ever January ‘Win the Pin’ contest winners!
| Top Transcriber | Top Photographers |
|---|---|
| 1. HonestAbe 12,640 | 1. Paulwuzhere 15,578 |
| 2. clyork0415 10,768 | 2. Lucinda7 14,488 |
| 3. keithbowden 9,782 | 3. David58 9,902 |
| 4. trishkovach 9,228 | 4. Jim Pack 5,993 |
| 5. Melyssawebb 8,594 | 5. kathleenba 5,628 |
| 6. StoneScriber 7,894 | 6. celestyna 5,292 |
| 7. Calopeman 5,769 | 7. calopeman 5,055 |
| 8. Pianomom3 5,550 | 8. NicksEagle 4,682 |
| 9. PookasMama 5,513 | 9. Sabrinabettridge 3,647 |
| 10. grump_redneck 5,301 | 10. Axemangraphics 2,918 |
| 11. MsXray40 5,179 | 11. mike flood 2,900 |
| 12. sabreid 5,5038 | 12. sunsearch 2,816 |
| 13. VeganHiker 5,008 | 13. Forestbank 2,793 |
| 14. Tombstoneguy 4,828 | 14. Tombstoneguy 2,454 |
| 15. KRobDFW 4,808 | 15. ryuyuki 2,433 |
| 16. ralph pierce 4,613 | 16. valmer 2,384 |
| 17. Alsher 4,525 | 17. jbdc_99 2,380 |
| 18. vblackledge 4,289 | 18. Whitejaegar 2,250 |
| 19. Charlene 4,022 | 19. roni46 2,245 |
| 20. DdraigGoch 3942 | 20. STEVE N 2,095 |
| 21. BarbaraSch 3694 | 21. MsXray40 2,019 |
| 22. gopanowitz 3,645 | 22. kj5gcs 1,658 |
| 23. OurFamilyBefore 3,644 | 23. kblack 1,641 |
| 24. jbdc_99 3,516 | 24. jlarcol ,637 |
| 25. ljpatockhewitt 3,272 | 25. Rlturner53 1,577 |
| 26. MargieW 3,041 | 26. Alan 1,504 |
| 27. jaitken 2,946 | 27. TXGenealogist 1,485 |
| 28. ncritchlow 2,897 | 28. gpsguy 1,250 |
| 29. RachelE 2,875 | 29. TabathaFBrown 1,168 |
| 30. melohnt 2,867 | 30. yorksfive 1,025 |
| 31. brian 2,816 | 31. ellentserv ,1,002 |
| 32. tonicholiday 2,796 | 32. Quiet_stroll 994 |
| 33. guthrm 2,710 | 33. StaceyHooper 989 |
| 34. shazzyfeet 2,671 | 34. zaneermine 950 |
| 35. jlkuncl 2,658 | 35. George 921 |
| 36. kblack 2,546 | 36. OpiumEater 901 |
| 37. Mptothill 2,511 | 37. homerdcj 836 |
| 38. yorksfive 2,413 | 38. JoyR 2832 |
| 39. LHM 2,380 | 39. Joelbeevers 828 |
| 40. huskerken 2,380 | 40. CopCruisers 811 |
| 41. 1renglestead 2,352 | 41. h12tjp 806 |
| 42. Melany 2,345 | 42. thunderbird584 805 |
| 43. 10131307t 2,341 | 43. Dolle54 758 |
| 44. JohnDanll 2,331 | 44. DunmireEagleProject 751 |
| 45. Frostyfan 2,321 | 45. Will 741 |
| 46. deacant 2,264 |
46. joyceboyle216 704 |
| 47. Hobbie 2,260 | 47. larry davis 691 |
| 48. reuben1 2,253 | 48. TelegramSam 689 |
| 49. roni46 2,235 | 49. jesscurren 688 |
| 50. maz591 2,018 | 50. Campbell2u 633 |
If you are on this list, please make sure your email on your BillionGraves account is your correct current email address. We will be emailing you through the email on your account. You will need to provide us a shipping address where you would like your January Pin sent. So watch your inbox for that this week.
Thanks again to all who contributed this month! We sure appreciate all your many contributions!
FamilySearch Invites Volunteers “Hasten the Work”
FamilySearch has teamed up with BillionGraves to “hasten the work” by organizing groups to taking photos of headstones around the world. Together this will increase the collection of headstones in an astounding rate.
Thanks FamilySearch, for continuing to help us reach our goal of 1 billion photographs and also thanks, Thom Reed, for your article on FamilySearch’s blog:
Wanted: FamilySearch Volunteers to
help BillionGraves Hasten the Work
BillionGraves is the fastest, easiest, and most efficient way to gather headstone data in the world. Using the BillionGraves app, images of headstones are captured with their GPS locations. These records are made available for free to millions of families around the globe. For over 2 years, BillionGraves has teamed up with FamilySearch on numerous headstone data gathering projects. In fact, in January 2014, BillionGraves was featured on Youth.LDS.org as part of the “Photograph a Cemetery” activity for youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Since the onset of the collaborative agreement between BillionGraves and FamilySearch, BillionGraves has provided FamilySearch with unique indexed records on FamilySearch.org that have aided millions in discovering their ancestors. Every headstone image on BillionGraves can be matched directly to an individual’s FamilySearch record page to populate their family tree and confirm vital information about that individual. By linking BillionGraves information to FamilySearch, you are helping people piece together their family stories one record at a time. Because BillionGraves is the only application in the world to include the GPS location of the record, millions have made connections that have gone well beyond the computer screen.
BillionGraves wants to assist in hastening the work of documenting our ancestors. We at FamilySearch invite any and all family history volunteers to register at BillionGraves.com and begin engaging in various BillionGraves projects. The best part about BillionGraves is that it is 100% FREE. A single BillionGraves volunteer can easily capture 500 images in a single hour; a well-organized group can photograph an entire cemetery in a single afternoon preserving thousands of headstones for generations.
Can’t find a BillionGraves project? Then create your own by inviting family and friends to take photos at your local cemetery! Volunteers doing the legwork are the heart of any cemetery project! But you don’t need to create a project to contribute. A couple hours on a Saturday can turn a trip to the local cemetery into a fun and fulfilling trip away from the television and with your family.
If you are interested in organizing a project for yourself or any size group, please visit the BillionGraves.com Contact Us page and the team at BillionGraves will reach out to you to help you make your project a success. Start the work now, to preserve the memories of our ancestors.
BillionGraves will be at RootsTech from February 6 – 8 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, UT. Come visit their interactive booth right next to ours, booth 815, to learn more
Tombstone Tuesday: Laura Ingalls Wilder
If you’ve ever read Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, or seen the award-winning TV series Little House on the Prairie, you have been influenced by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s work. These stories are based on Laura’s own childhood experiences living in Kansas and Wisconsin and provide insight into 19th century life on the frontier.
Although most people are familiar with stories from Laura’s childhood (her books are based on Laura’s own childhood experiences), not many know what happened later on in Laura’s life. As told in her books Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years, Laura married Almanzo Wilder and moved to De Smet, South Dakota. Before she was married, Laura worked as a school teacher since age 15[edit by contributor], worked with the local dressmaker, and attended high school.
Laura had two children, a girl named Rose and a boy who died in infancy. This heartache was just one of the many trials Laura and Almanzo experienced during their early years of marriage. Almanzo was left partially paralyzed from an illness, their barn caught fire and destroyed most of their hay and grain, another fire burned their house down, and a drought severely damaged their 
crops.
The couple then moved to Mansfield, Missouri where Laura worked for a loan company as well as a writer for the local paper. It was here that she gained most of her writing experience that came in handy years later when the family lost most of their money in the Stock Market crash (1929). With the help and encouragement of her daughter, Rose, she published her first book Little House in the Big Woods three years later.
Since the original publication of the book, Little House in the Big Woods had been in print continuously and has been translated into 40 different languages.1 This provided the Wilder family with the continuous income they needed to recover from all the money they lost during the Stock Market crash.
Laura died at the age of 90—eight years after Almanzo passed away. She was buried alongside her husband in Mansfield, Missouri.
Want to learn more about Laura Ingalls Wilder? Read more here.
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1 Laura Ingalls Wilder, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder.
Who Do You Think You Are…
Guest Blog Post By Brandon Jensen
Throughout life one cannot help to think of the great legacy their ancestors have left before them. The amazing ancestral mysteries of who, where, and why my life is.
Life can bring complicated and yet challenging adventures with landsides of opportunities and options to choose from. For most people, choices can be simple and easy, and for others challenging and hard thought process. But, what would life be or what has life become through formalities of the thought process of choices. After all, all paths lead to somewhere or something great or small.
Why is genealogy important:
Genealogy is important because it helps satisfy the inward persona, the deep need to understand the world around us and how we fit it in. Also, may we not forget the importance of learning from others through the experience they’ve gained, may we also learn from them.
Benefits of doing genealogy:
Genealogy is a popular pastime. I’m always impressed to learn or find something new that transpired from descendants, to the little settled integrates that granted outcomes from choices made throughout their life. It grants great joy knowing the outcome of hardship and challenges our ancestors faced, and by knowing the great and amazing mysteries of who, where, and why.
May we remember there is never been a better time than know to get a jump start on our genealogical New Year’s resolution!
Motto: Life was and is what we make it! – Past, Present, and Future!
5 top complaints- Why “NOT” to do Genealogy Work
Guest Blog Post BY PATRICK WILLIAMS:
When I was a young child, I learned about Genealogy from my Grandmother. My teachers and leaders at church would always talk about it. Growing up as a Mormon, it was talked about a lot in regards to Temple work and the action of “Redeeming the Dead”. As soon as they started talking about “Genealogy” I would automatically tune out!
So my fellow Genealogy nuts, lets talk about the 5 reasons why your Grandma-ma wants you to do Genealogy and why we will convince all the cool Hipsters to stop hanging out on Instagram, and start hanging out on BillionGraves instead!
#5- Genealogy work is just so boringggggggggg!
Oh contraire! This couldn’t be further from the truth. Do me a solid, and go ask your Grandparents, or your parents about how they met. Go ask them about their parents or their great grand parents. The stories that they will tell you about where you came from will not only blow your mind, but they will give you such a great appreaction for your heritage and your own very blood line.
When we read about the hardships, tragedies, and triumphs of our ancestors, it makes us realize how relatively easy we have it, and how fortunate we are. And it gives us a real sense of debt and gratitude.
#4 Why do the Genealogy agony?
Because it gives YOU a lever to pry simple questions about you out of your own parents. What do you and your parents have in common here? We now know that, if the family history is to be saved at all, this late, with the old folks passing on, the time is now or never, and we want to save what we can while we can.
If, years from now, someone in the next generation wants to REALLY dig into the family stuff, at least we must give him or her a good, solid, scaffolding from which to begin, preferably with lots of interesting family stories too.
# 3 where do I even start?
This can be the most difficult question, but with amazing resources such as BillionGraves it makes starting very easy. How easy is it you ask?? You can install the genealogy camera app on your iPhone, android or GPS-enabled phone to record grave marker locations worldwide! You can Transcribe & Search grave images for free on the Billiongraves.com website! That’s just as easy as posting a picture of your food from Café Rio you took the other day with the hashtag #soyummy!
What started out as a “simple” project has now become all consuming. One of the nicest things to happen from this research is how you can spend hours and hours talking to your parents about your “finds” as opposed to talking about their health. The bottom line is I now enjoy playing detective and sharing my finds with any and all relatives who care to have the information.
#2 I would rather text and take pictures on Instagram!
Ok all you “hipster” kids. Do me a favor, take out your phone and search for the #hashtag #graves on Instagram and or Facebook or Twitter. You will be amazed at all of the amazing photos and rich history of the Millions and Millions of gravestones that are being uploaded on a daily and hourly basis.
Just to give you an idea of how cool and fun this work is, Genealogy websites are receiving millions and millions of hits every single day!
#1 I don’t want to learn about my family!
Now, in my humble opinion, this is just plain dumb. After everything is said and done in this life, all we have is our family and maybe a few close friends.
How people went from one side of our country to the other with the slow moving vehicles–how they existed–what their trials, loves, and happiness’s were, etc.
So all my “Hipster” friends- it’s very simple and easy to get started. Pick up your iPhone and go to www.billiongraves.com and get started today!
What where are some challenges and questions you may have had when you first got started doing this work? Please leave your comments below! Let’s start a great conversation!
If you have any questions about starting your own project or feedback, contact them at support@billiongraves.com.
About the Author: Patrick Williams
Patrick Williams is an SEO Specialist and avid Blogger. When not slaving over google search results and building links to the god’s of the internet, Patrick is a single dad to an adorable little boy. He also coaches high school soccer, and is an avid sports fan. He also has many leather bound books, that smell of rich mahogany. He is also fluent in the Cambodian language.
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